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Venice without water

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Re: Venice without water

#71

Post by SunShiranui »

wojcikstefan wrote: post #8

To an uneducated eye (like mine), Venice looks inadaptable and bound to struggle, and eventually fail. Buildings require constant repair due to erosion. Too much water brings flooding, too little exposes mud and filth, and hinders transportation... I'm very curious to know what counter-measures are put in place to protect the city from these (and many more) dangers.

Motherboard made a documentary about this and what could happen to Venice in the next 100 years, but it's only available in Italian as far as I'm aware: https://video.vice.com/it/video/venezia-2100/59e606b5177dd46...

Re: Venice without water

#74

Post by roywiggins »

wojcikstefan wrote: post #8

To an uneducated eye (like mine), Venice looks inadaptable and bound to struggle, and eventually fail. Buildings require constant repair due to erosion. Too much water brings flooding, too little exposes mud and filth, and hinders transportation... I'm very curious to know what counter-measures are put in place to protect the city from these (and many more) dangers.

Every city is constantly flooding, burning, and falling apart. But people keep coming and building them up again.

Just look at... well, all of Europe after WWII. Lots of Warsaw had to be rebuilt from scratch. It takes a lot to actually kill a city for good, though obviously it does happen.

Re: Venice without water

#75

Post by tlack »

briandear wrote: post #26
starik36 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing happened when I was there as well. But, surprisingly, it wasn't as big of a hassle as one would have thought. You could just walk around it. And a few hours later rain stopped, the flooding relented and it was back to normal.

And you’ll see stepping-stone type things scattered around the sidewalks to help people walk over flooded areas as well as doors to homes and businesses sealed at the bottom to allow for about 1 meter of flooding without causing any interior damage. Then there are sandbags scattered about to help with flood protection when necessary. Venice has been fine for hundreds of years; it isn’t all the sudden going to fail..…

The adaptability of Venetians, and their ability to live a full, happy life while accepting their lack of control over the environment, changed me a deep and meaningful way.

and those dark back streets, too narrow for GPS signal at times, distant foot steps, no addresses.. wonderful!

Re: Venice without water

#77

Post by emmelaich »

wojcikstefan wrote: post #8

To an uneducated eye (like mine), Venice looks inadaptable and bound to struggle, and eventually fail. Buildings require constant repair due to erosion. Too much water brings flooding, too little exposes mud and filth, and hinders transportation... I'm very curious to know what counter-measures are put in place to protect the city from these (and many more) dangers.

If nothing else this event sounds like a good opportunity to do some inspections.

Re: Venice without water

#79

Post by CydeWeys »

mschuster91 wrote: post #46
CydeWeys wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By far the biggest danger to Venice is the hoards of tourists that make getting around for a local almost impossible. You've got it precisely backwards. By far the biggest danger to Venice is the absence of those hoards of tourists. Venice is dependent upon tourism income for its economy to an extent much greater than most other cities. Rome, Florence, Milan, and others have big businesses and use tourism as supple…

> By far the biggest danger to Venice is the absence of those hoards of tourists. No. The danger is any point away from the equilibrium - too few/no tourists and there's no income, but too many tourists and the tourists won't spread the word for other potential travelers anymore when they e.g. cannot go to any popular place or getting ripped off hundreds of dollars for pizza.

"It's such a popular tourist spot, no one goes there anymore." (Apologies to Yogi Berra.)

Tourism-based economies can't fail from becoming too profitable. If prices are high, it's only because people are still willing to pay them. It's market forces in action.

Re: Venice without water

#80

Post by dredmorbius »

CydeWeys wrote: post #79
mschuster91 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By far the biggest danger to Venice is the absence of those hoards of tourists. No. The danger is any point away from the equilibrium - too few/no tourists and there's no income, but too many tourists and the tourists won't spread the word for other potential travelers anymore when they e.g. cannot go to any popular place or getting ripped off hundreds of dollars for pizza.

"It's such a popular tourist spot, no one goes there anymore." (Apologies to Yogi Berra.) Tourism-based economies can't fail from becoming too profitable. If prices are high, it's only because people are still willing to pay them. It's market forces in action.

Just giving that a cursory thinking through, I can see several ways in which that might fail.

"Real-estate-based economies can't fail from becoming too profitable. If prices and rents are high, it's only because people are still willing to pay them. It's market forces in action."

Or, perhaps, it's rents-extraction, money-laundering, signs of even worse collapse elsewhere, and killing the underlying fundamentals of the local economy.

I suspect there's similar lines of analysis which could be applied to tourist spots. And am wondering what examples of now-failed tourist temples there might be. Say, Niagara Falls, as an example.

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